Our Employee Assistance Programme Response Centre staff work with a large number of callers every day – Zoe, one of our Helpline Counsellors, gave us this example of a recent call:
A worried mother called the helpline about her 12 year old daughter. She had stumbled upon her daughter’s emails and found that she had been telling lies to her friends about her family. The emails said that she had a large family with lots and brothers and sisters and a mum and dad. The actual situation is that it is just her and her daughter, the father having left a year or so ago.
The helpline advisor listened carefully to what the mother was saying and offered some reassurance that a certain amount of storytelling was usual in children.
Having discussed the difficulty of maintaining a daughter’s privacy whilst wanting to know she was safe, they went on to explore together whether there were any other changes in her daughter’s behaviour with the caller realising that her daughter no longer had any friends over for tea.
The Helpline advisor suggested using this as a prompt to ask her how her daughter was feeling, rather than admitting to reading her emails, so as to not make her daughter feel as though her privacy has been invaded. They talked a bit about how to use tentative and opening questioning styles.
The helpline advisor also gave her some details about where to get further help, through websites like www.parentlineplus.org.uk and www.gingerbread.org.uk and they also talked about making an appointment with her GP to discuss her concerns, in case that might provide a route into further support for her daughter, as well as giving her details of local young persons’ counselling organisations.
The caller went away feeling a litte more reliefed about her daughters actions, more confident in approaching her daughter and armed with information on where to go next and how to get the support she needed.